Caesarea pie

"They will have a memorial service," she thinks Loxandra biting a piece of pastrum. "Bad weather to have Tarnana, you cut the pasturma thick."

Ο cured beef the favorite appetizer of the Greeks of Asia Minor and Anatolia did not escape the themes of the folk muse in respective traditional songs of the time or in references to short stories, such as the above excerpt by the author Maria Iordanidou in the novel by Loxandra.

Pastourmas (or pastrumas), a typical sausage of oriental cuisine, is prepared nowadays in many areas of Greece that are close to Turkey (Thrace, NE Aegean islands, Dodecanese). He was brought with him by the refugees from Asia Minor, from the lost homelands.

The raw pastourma with the characteristic taste of cement -a mixture with a characteristic aroma of buckwheat, paprika, allspice, cumin-, together with various pickles, is made ideal meze of ouzo and tsipouro, but also fried, participates with its intense taste in omelets and saganakia.

However, he achieves his peak moment in the famous Caesarea pie -the best pastourmades were made here-, where it creates a unique balance between the sharp pasturma, the sweet and juicy tomato and the fatty cheese.

The preparation of Caesarea pie is simple:

Place the first handmade sheet in the pan and spread the pastroma, the cheese and the tomato in order, cover them with the second sheet and place them in the oven.